by Danny Miller
For some reason the pathologist’s report seemed to sum up Frost’s career trajectory of late. A lot of which was made up of going after cases that no one else was really that bothered about, or that were too much bother when the evidence didn’t have a big red neon sign pointing at it. Frost could see why Mullett wanted the team on Operation Country Mile. It was big; it had the media involved, the national papers and TV coverage. And it had the kind of political edge that would put Mullett and the other County supers in the good graces of the powers that be.
Frost slapped the report on the floor. The sudden move sent a wave of pain up his back, and gave him more facts to be considered. Just who the hell was in Fielding’s house last night? What were they looking for, the stash under the floorboards? Frost felt another wave of pain move through him, not his back this time; it was the thought that maybe, just maybe, Mullett was right, there hadn’t been anyone in the house last night, no one pushed him down the stairs. Maybe it was his imagination working overtime, fuelled by the Skol? Maybe he had had one too many …
‘Bingo! Mr Frost?’
Frost rose up from the floor as slowly as evolution itself. He used every part of his desk as a handhold to get himself out of the primordial slime, to crouched primate, stooped Neanderthal, eventually to fully erect Homo sapiens.
‘Ah, lovely Rita, what have you got for us?’
‘What were you doing down there?’
‘My back, Rita. I’ve done my back in.’
‘Mmm. Best place for you, then. Did I tell you about the time I slipped a disc on the top deck of the number 34? Well, I was just …’
Rita was a woman with a fulsome and uncanny knack of lighting up a room – some unkindly said it was the garish velour clothes and the orange and electric-blue Crazy Colour hair dye that did it. But Frost was more charitable and thought it was achieved by the pure force of her sunny disposition and smiling countenance alone.
‘… I said, I’m not buying an extra ticket, I can’t bloody move!’
‘Very good, Rita. Just out of interest – “Bingo”, what did you find?’
‘Well, Inspector, some interesting results. Eight of the thirteen items came up as stolen, including the Cartier suite of jewellery, and all eight give no details of the original robbery, or who they belonged to in the first place. They’re marked under “special measures”, and just give a number to call.’
As Frost considered this, a smirk crept across his face. Game on. ‘Bingo indeed, Rita, bingo-in-bloody-deed! What’s the number?’
‘One hundred and eeiigghhtttyyyyy!’ cried out Harry Baskin.
Keith ‘Keefy’ Keathson pulled his three arrows out of the red section, that precious sliver of real estate at the top of the darts board that was the El Dorado of the game. Grinning broadly, Keith was on fire, throwing the best arrows of his young career. In his flesh-pink silk bowling shirt, trimmed with purple, and with The Coconut Grove emblazoned on the back, Keith approached the oche once again.
Harry Baskin, Keith’s manager, was sat at the bar, sipping his piping-hot morning tea and watching his young protégé practise whilst dispensing words of encouragement. ‘That’s magic, Keith, that’s beautiful darts. Truly glorious arrows, son.’ Harry had witnessed three 180s this morning alone, and even though it was just a practice session and not the adrenalin-fuelled bear-pit of competition, on today’s showing, Harry was prepared to bet heavy on him.
The Coconut Grove was Denton’s pre-eminent ‘gentlemen’s entertainment venue’, as Harry called it. Whilst others referred to it in more prosaic terms – a strip joint. Just not in front of Harry. Harry believed that the success of movies like Flashdance, and all the female dance troupes cropping up on prime-time TV, like Pan’s People, Legs & Co, Hot Gossip, had legitimized and elevated ‘erotic dancing’ to an art form. The girls at the Coconut Grove couldn’t just stand there and peel off their kit, they now had to put in a shift and throw some moves: high kicks, splits, cartwheels and all manner of gymnastics were required if they wanted a gig at the Coconut Grove. And they did, because Harry Baskin paid good money. He looked after his girls, his ‘Baskin Bunnies’, as they had become known.
But Harry had greater ambitions for the club, and young Keith ‘Keefy’ Keathson was going to help him realize those. The dream was to watch the white-quiffed Dickie Davies, with his luxuriant moustache, announce on World of Sport, ‘And now we go live to the Coconut Grove …’
Keith collected his darts and was about to go again when—
‘Harry! He’s here!’
The arrow shot out of Keith’s hand and missed the board altogether. Baskin turned to see his biggest bouncer, Bad Manners Bob: baby’s-bottom bald, six-foot-something-ridiculous and closing in on 300lbs. The trepidation on his face confused Harry. Being the size he was naturally imbued Bad Manners Bob with a certain bullish confidence; it was what he was paid for.
‘Who’s here? What’s wrong?’
‘He’s in your office.’
Harry Baskin slammed the Charles and Diana commemorative mug of tea on the counter. His fleshy features crumpled in disbelief. ‘Are you saying you let someone in my office?’
The big bald bouncer nodded, blankly.
‘My office … my … my inner-fuckin’-sanctum?’
‘I told him to wait at the bar, but he just sort of … breezed right past me.’
‘Breezed past you? How did he manage that?’
‘I stood aside.’
Bad Manners Bob seemed genuinely perplexed at his own actions. The huge unit of a man whose stock-in-trade was never to stand aside, never to let anyone past he wasn’t supposed to let past, had ceded, taken a backwards step, and let someone breeze past him. He looked like a broken man. Who could have done this to Bad Manners Bob? Who would have the bottle? Who would dare …?
Baskin then glanced down at the Denton Echo, and the front-page photo of a man holding up a book, with a uniformed and bearded copper beside him giving the thumbs-up. Bad Manners Bob was instantly forgiven. There were few men, and none in Denton, who would stand in the way of this man. He’d said that he’d be paying Harry a visit. He’d asked for a favour, and Harry had foolishly agreed to it. And now he was here to collect.
Harry Baskin made his way to his office. At the door, he composed himself, packed his face full of hail-fellow-well-met bonhomie, then whooshed it open with gusto. ‘Here he is, a sight for sore eyes, handsome as ever, the man himself …’
Jimmy McVale was standing imposingly in the centre of the room, and he looked like he’d been stretching, or limbering up. He folded his muscular arms across the pronounced pecs of his chest. He had a light sheen of sweat over his dark handsome face, and was wearing a red Diadora tracksuit with white chevrons running down the arms and legs, and Reebok running shoes.
‘What did you do, jog here?’ asked Harry Baskin, ensuring the smile he’d forced on to his lips didn’t slip.
‘Six miles, I reckon, from the hotel.’
Harry Baskin pulled an ‘impressed’ face. ‘You must be thirsty. The sun’s almost over the yardarm, maybe not here but certainly somewhere in the world, can I get you a drink?’
‘Club soda, ice and a slice if you’ve got it.’
Harry invited Jimmy McVale to sit down, and went over to the drinks cabinet and fixed them both a drink. When he turned around Jimmy McVale was, predictably enough, sat in Harry’s seat behind his desk. Harry kept smiling, swallowed his pride, handed McVale his drink and sat down in the cheap seats opposite his guest.
‘Been a long time, Jimmy. How are you adjusting to the world? Smooth re-entry?’
‘As expected, Harry, as expected. You’ve done well for yourself. Put on a little weight in the intervening years.’
Harry Baskin contemplated his ample girth; he couldn’t ignore it, and frankly he usually revelled in it. He hadn’t been eating prison food for the last seventeen years. Harry kept smiling. He’d done some ‘bird’ himself, but didn’t have the stomach for it like men suc
h as Jimmy McVale. And Baskin knew that they were always chippy when they came out after a long stretch, like they resented everything you had.
‘Intervening? I counted four syllables, I’ll have to look that one up. So it’s true, you have been at the old studies. I read it in the papers, you’ve got a university degree.’
‘You have to fill your time, Harry. I had a lot of years to reflect on my actions, my life. I didn’t want to fill them with bitterness or resentment for the past. I wanted to fill them with knowledge, to understand where I’d gone wrong. Hopefully be in a position to help others not make the same mistakes.’
‘All right, mate, you’re not talking to the parole board now.’
McVale laughed.
Harry nervously cleared his throat. ‘Well, you’re looking terrific, Jimmy. So, what are you doing in Denton? I thought you’d settle Kent way, what with you being from south-east London. Bermondsey, wasn’t it?’
‘I love the countryside around here, what can I say?’
How about the truth, you lying bastard, thought Harry. What he actually said was: ‘It is lovely.’
‘I’ve come to take you up on that offer.’
‘Offer?’
‘Short memory, Harry?’
‘I’ve been very busy. A new venture. You know I used to do a bit of promoting, back in the Big Smoke.’
‘I do, Harry. Unlicensed boxing above that pub you had in Hoxton. You staged some great fights there. I was there the night “Gypsy” Bradley bit Tommy “Sweet Face” Mullins’s nose off.’
Harry smiled again. ‘Ahh, wonderful days, I remember that night well. Still, can’t get all misty-eyed and nostalgic. Onwards and upwards.’
‘So you’re back in the fight game?’
Harry stopped smiling and an air of solemnity came over him. ‘Darts, Jimmy. Darts! I’m getting the place spruced up for Denton’s first major darts tournament. We’ve just confirmed Jocky “At the Oche” Wilson; the Welsh Wizard, Leighton “Marathon Man” Rees; and from abroad, the Great Dane, Finn Jensen. As well as Cliff Inglis, Bill “Mr Consistency” Lennard, and Denton’s very own Mr Talent himself, Keith “Keefy” Keathson.’
Jimmy McVale looked singularly unimpressed. ‘They say golf is a good walk spoilt. I reckon darts is a good booze-up spoilt.’
Harry Baskin looked genuinely deflated. ‘Jimmy, no, mate, it’s a mixture of eye-to-hand coordination, strategy, mathematics – subtraction mainly – and showmanship. I’m getting measured for a gold-lamé suit. Every time there’s a 180 we’ll play “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts”. And then one of my girls wearing some kinky boots, a big smile and nothing else will hold up the score.’
‘Classy. I wish you luck. Do you have the keys, Harry?’
‘Keys?’
‘When I saw you at my getting-out party last month, and said I’d be visiting Denton, you mentioned you had a place I could stay. A cottage you said, out of the way, nice and secluded.’
‘Did I? I can’t remember, Jimmy, I’d had a few drinks, I believe. Good party, though. Kind of you to invite me.’
‘That’s why I invited you. Because I knew you lived out here.’
Under McVale’s unrelenting gaze Harry finally nodded along in recognition of this. It was nice and secluded, a little rustic bolt-hole, away from prying eyes, especially those of Mrs Baskin, where he could entertain the girls from the club who really took his fancy.
‘Ah yes. I did mention that, didn’t I? And here you are.’
Jimmy McVale placed his bottle of Canada Dry on the desk with a threatening thud, which brought home the very point that Harry had just made.
‘It’s undergoing a full restoration,’ said Baskin. ‘It’s a building site at the moment. Hardly fit for habitation.’
‘Running water, gas, electric?’
‘I think so.’
‘That’ll do me.’
‘What exactly are you going to do there?’
McVale deployed the smile again. ‘One reason, and one reason only – to finish the new book I’ve started. Part two of my memoirs. To tackle the bit where I really started getting in trouble. The big jobs. And I need somewhere nice and quiet, secluded, no distractions, so I can get on with it. I can’t do it in London, too much going on, too many temptations.’
Harry Baskin weighed this up. It sounded reasonable. ‘So … so you’ve really given up the old life?’
‘What more do I have to do to prove it to people? I’ve done my time and come out the other end a changed man. I’ve got letters after my name to prove my mind has now developed a richer moral and philosophical understanding of my place in the world. It’s finished with the insanity, the greed, the covetousness, the need for power over others.’
Harry shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and focused on the Canada Dry bottle on the desk. That could so easily be a weapon in the wrong hands, Jimmy’s hands, he thought. Jimmy then winked at Harry, and pulled the trigger on the smile yet again.
‘Plus the fact my first book’s on the bestsellers list, so there’s more money to be made pushing a pen across paper than there is blowing safe doors off.’
Harry laughed along with him.
‘Tell me, Jimmy, is this the book where you finally reveal the truth?’
‘What truth’s that, Harry?’
‘The Bond Street job. I heard whatever was in those safe-deposit boxes was worth … millions. A king’s ransom.’
‘A king’s ransom?’
Harry winked. ‘Just a phrase. But there were rumours.’
‘You should choose your words more carefully.’
‘You can tell me, Jimmy – who am I going to tell?’
McVale picked up his glass, squeezed the lemon, and then downed his drink in a couple of thirsty gulps. ‘You know, I was never actually convicted for the robbery. They tried to pin it on me, but they couldn’t. Didn’t have the evidence.’
‘Just the head in the duffel bag …’
‘To find out what happened, you’ll have to buy the book.’
‘You’ll tell all? In a book?’
Jimmy squeezed out a nonchalant shrug. ‘Double jeopardy rule. They can’t touch me. But I’ve got to write it first. The keys, Harry.’
Baskin was looking forward to reading that, so he hauled himself out of his seat and went over to the portrait of Margaret Thatcher, and took it off the wall to reveal the safe. He spun the tumbler and opened it up. As he did so, he realized that he must really believe Jimmy had changed. He certainly wouldn’t have opened up his safe in front of the old McVale. There were two metal objects in the safe: a Beretta 92 semi-automatic pistol and a jailer’s ring of keys. He reached for the keys, slipped off the requisite one and handed it to Jimmy McVale.
‘Do us a favour, Harry, don’t tell anyone where I am.’
‘You were never here.’
Tuesday (3)
‘This is most interesting … most interesting indeed, Inspector Frost.’
‘I was hoping it might be,’ Frost replied with a satisfied grin as he watched DI Anthony Dorking of the Stolen Art and Antiques Unit. Dorking’s eyes were gleaming and he was almost salivating at the Instamatic photos Frost had laid out on his desk.
It was quite a desk, rich mahogany with a green leather panel. And it was in quite an office, even by County HQ standards. An office that seemed to be stuffed with as many antiques and works of fine art as were listed on their computer database of stolen items. If this is where it all ends up, at least it’s appreciated, thought the detective, giving Dorking the benefit of the doubt.
Anthony Dorking sat back in his chair and made a low purring sound, like he’d got the cream. He was tall and rake-thin in a pinstripe double-breasted suit that was cut perfectly to his gaunt frame. Everything about him struck Frost as public school, from his lank blond hair that came with a long foppish fringe, to his stripy tie, to the heavy gold signet ring that bore a family crest. A lot of his ilk, the ones who didn’t get the tap on the shoulder at university
to spy on the USSR, or for the USSR, ended up in forensic accounting, or Special Branch. Or some, like Dorking, used their natural affinity for the finer things in life by tracking stolen art and antiques.
‘One of the paintings, an early Vogel, I can tell you now comes from a famous robbery, must be twenty-five years ago. The victim was the Earl of Penbury. We thought the painting had gone abroad. And there it was, under Ivan Fielding’s floorboards. Tell me, Inspector, Ivan Fielding’s death, do you suspect foul play?’
Frost had explained the case to Anthony Dorking over the phone, including the post-mortem report, but had hinted at other possibilities.
‘Do you?’ asked Frost.
‘Well, let me put it this way, a sticky end for Ivan Fielding was never beyond the realms of possibility … maybe even probability.’
‘How so?’
‘A fascinating character.’
‘And a fence?’
‘Oh yes. Of course. That’s what you’re here to find out, I take it. But much, much more than just that. And first and foremost, as I say, a fascinating character.’
Dorking offered him a Dunhill and Frost accepted. Dorking lit their cigarettes with an elegant gold rectangular lighter, which he kept in his left hand and smoothly rotated in his long fingers.
‘You see, the painting was stolen from the upstairs sitting room of the earl’s country house whilst there was a dinner party taking place downstairs. And Ivan was a guest. He was extremely well connected, and that’s what made him perfect for this line of work. And the burglar who was robbing the earl during the dinner party was none other than Ivan’s best friend and business partner, Conrad Wilde.’